Re: re Hiding controls and another question
Re: re Hiding controls and another question
- Subject: Re: re Hiding controls and another question
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 10:53:12 -0800
The problem is that we are dealing with two competing sets of
interfaces,
both with standards that have developed over years. And thus we have
Mac
programmers (like myself) where hiding irrelevant controls is
considered the
proper thing to do, because when you show a disabled control the user's
first question is "Why can't I click in this checkbox?" And you have
*Step
programmers where dimming irrelevant controls is considered the proper
thing
to do, because when controls are hiding and appearing the user goes
"Whoa!
Where'd that button go!"
Thus was it always done on the Mac isn't a good enough argument, thus
was it
always done on *Step isn't a good enough argument. It's going to take
some
time for the two histories to merge, and what will come out will be a
mixture of the two.
No, no, that's far too reasonable of a position. How dare you try to
inject a bit of rationality into a religious debate! :->
I myself use both methods of "UI disabling" in my apps, depending upon
context, and I could give good arguments for the choices I made in each
case. I haven't had a single complaint from a user yet. Apple's apps
in OS X also use both methods; the Finder, for example, in the View
Options panel, hides the UI for choosing a view background picture until
that option is chosen with the radio control. I cite that example just
because I happen to remember it's there, but I believe there are many
others.
It would be nice to get an official statement from Apple on this,
though, and added support from Cocoa for hiding of controls if their
official position is that that is acceptable UI. I've just logged a bug
on Apple to this effect.
Ben Haller
Stick Software
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